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Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Why We’re Never Told Why We’re Attacked

By Joe Lauria. Originally published at Consortium News.
After a Russian commercial airliner was downed over Egypt’s Sinai last October, Western media reported that
the Islamic State bombing was retaliation against Russian airstrikes in
Syria. The killing of 224 people, mostly Russian tourists on holiday,
was matter-of-factly treated as an act of war by a fanatical group
without an air force resorting to terrorism as a way to strike back.
Yet, Western militaries have killed infinitely more innocent
civilians in the Middle East than Russia has. Then why won’t Western
officials and media cite retaliation for that Western violence as a
cause of terrorist attacks on New York, Paris and Brussels?

Instead, there’s a fierce determination not to make the same kinds of
linkages that the press made so easily when it was Russia on the
receiving end of terror. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Obama Ignores Russian Terror Victims.”]
For example, throughout four hours of Sky News’ coverage of
the July 7, 2005 attacks in London, only the briefest mention was made
about a possible motive for that horrific assault on three Underground
trains and a bus, killing 52 people. But the attacks came just two years
after Britain’s participation in the murderous invasion of Iraq.
Prime Minister Tony Blair, one of the Iraq War’s architects,
condemned the loss of innocent life in London and linked the attacks to a
G-8 summit he’d opened that morning. A TV host then read and belittled a
10-second claim of responsibility from a self-proclaimed Al Qaeda
affiliate in Germany saying that the Iraq invasion was to blame. There
was no more discussion about it.
To explain why these attacks happen is not to condone or justify
terrorist outrages against innocent civilians. It is simply a
responsibility of journalism, especially when the “why” is no mystery.
It was fully explained by Mohammad Sidique Khan, one of the four London
suicide bombers. Though speaking for only a tiny fraction of Muslims, he
said in a videotaped recording before the attack:
“Your democratically-elected governments continuously perpetuate
atrocities against my people all over the world. And your support of
them makes you directly responsible, just as I am directly responsible
for protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters. Until we
feel security you will be our targets and until you stop the bombing,
gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people we will not stop this
fight. We are at war and I am a soldier. Now you too will taste the
reality of this situation.”
The Islamic State published the following reason for carrying out last November’s Paris attacks:
“Let France and all nations following its path know that they will
continue to be at the top of the target list for the Islamic State and
that the scent of death will not leave their nostrils as long as they
partake part in the crusader campaign … and boast about their war
against Islam in France, and their strikes against Muslims in the lands
of the Caliphate with their jets.”Claiming It’s a State of Mind
Ignoring such clear statements of intent, we are instead served
bromides by the likes of State Department spokesman Mark Toner about the
Brussels bombings, saying it is impossible “to get into the minds of
those who carry out these attacks.”
Mind reading isn’t required, however. The Islamic State explicitly
told us in a press statement why it did the Brussels attacks: “We
promise black days for all crusader nations allied in their war against
the Islamic State, in response to their aggressions against it.”
Yet, still struggling to explain why it happened, Toner said, “I
think it reflects more of an effort to inflict on who they see as
Western or Westerners … fear that they can carry out these kinds of
attacks and to attempt to lash out.”
Toner ascribed the motive to a state of mind: “I don’t know if this
is about establishing a caliphate beyond the territorial gains that
they’ve tried to make in Iraq and Syria, but it’s another aspect of
Daesh’s kind of warped ideology that they’re carrying out these attacks
on Europe and elsewhere if they can. … Whether it’s the hopes or the
dreams or the aspirations of a certain people never justifies violence.”
After 9/11, President George W. Bush infamously said the U.S. was
attacked because “they hate our freedoms.” It’s a perfect example of a
Western view that ascribes motives to Easterners without allowing them
to speak for themselves or taking them seriously when they do.
Explaining his motive behind 9/11, Osama bin Laden, in his Letter to America, expressed anger about U.S. troops stationed on Saudi soil. Bin Laden asked:
“Why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is very simple:
Because you attacked us and continue to attack us.” (Today the U.S. has
dozens of bases in seven countries in the region.)
So why won’t Western officials and corporate media take the
jihadists’ statements of intent at face value? Why won’t they really
tell us why we are attacked?
It seems to be an effort to cover up a long and ever more intense
history of Western military and political intervention in the Middle
East and the violent reactions it provokes, reactions that put innocent
Western lives at risk. Indirect Western culpability in these terrorist
acts is routinely suppressed, let alone evidence of direct Western involvement with terrorism.
Some government officials and journalists might delude themselves
into believing that Western intervention in the Middle East is an
attempt to protect civilians and spread democracy to the region, instead
of bringing chaos and death to further the West’s strategic and
economic aims. Other officials must know better.1920-1950: A Century of Intervention Begins
A few might know the mostly hidden history of duplicitous and often
reckless Western actions in the Middle East. It is hidden only to most
Westerners, however. So it is worth looking in considerable detail at
this appalling record of interference in the lives of millions of
Muslims to appreciate the full weight it exerts on the region. It can
help explain anti-Western anger that spurs a few radicals to commit
atrocities in the West.

French diplomat Francois George-Picot, who
along with British colonial officer Mark Sykes drew lines across a
Middle East map of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, carving out
states with boundaries that are nearly the same as they are today.

The history is an unbroken string of interventions from the end of
the First World War until today. It began after the war when Britain and
France double-crossed the Arabs on promised independence for aiding
them in victory over the Ottoman Empire. The secret 1916 Sykes-Picot
accord divided the region between the European powers behind the Arabs’
backs. London and Paris created artificial nations from Ottoman
provinces to be controlled by their installed kings and rulers with
direct intervention when necessary.
What has followed for 100 years has been continuous efforts by
Britain and France, superseded by the United States after the Second
World War, to manage Western dominance over a rebellious region.
The new Soviet government revealed the Sykes-Picot terms in November 1917 in Izvestia. When
the war was over, the Arabs revolted against British and French
duplicity. London and Paris then ruthlessly crushed the uprisings for
independence.
France defeated a proclaimed Syrian government in a single day, July 24, 1920, at the Battle of Maysalun.
Five years later there was a second Syrian revolt, replete with
assassinations and sabotage, which took two years to suppress. If you
walk through the souk in Old Damascus and look up at the corrugated iron
roof you see tiny specks of daylight peeking through. Those are bullet
holes from French war planes that massacred civilians below.
Britain put down a series of independence revolts in Iraq between
1920 and 1922, first with 100,000 British and Indian troops and then
mostly with the first use of air power in counterinsurgency. Thousands
of Arabs were killed. Britain also helped its installed King Abdullah
put down rebellions in Jordan in 1921 and 1923.
London then faced an Arab revolt in Palestine lasting from 1936 to
1939, which it brutally crushed, killing about 4,000 Arabs. The next
decade, Israeli terrorists drove the British out of Palestine in 1947,
one of the rare instances when terrorists attained their political
goals.
Germany and Italy, late to the Empire game, were next to invade North
Africa and the Middle East at the start of the Second World War. They
were driven out by British imperial forces (largely Indian) with U.S.
help. Britain invaded and defeated nominally independent Iraq, which had
sided with the Axis. With the Soviet Union, Britain also invaded and
occupied Iran.
After the war, the U.S. assumed regional dominance under the guise of
fending off Soviet regional influence. Just three years after Syrian
independence from France, the two-year old Central Intelligence Agency
engineered a Syrian coup in 1949 against a democratic, secular
government. Why? Because it had balked at approving a Saudi pipeline plan that the U.S. favored. Washington installed Husni al-Za’im, a military dictator, who approved the plan.1950s: Syria Then and Now
Before the major invasion and air wars in Iraq and Libya of the past
15 years, the 1950s was the era of America’s most frequent, and mostly
covert, involvement in the Middle East. The Eisenhower administration
wanted to contain both Soviet influence and Arab nationalism, which
revived the quest for an independent Arab nation. After a series of
coups and counter-coups, Syria returned to democracy in 1955, leaning
towards the Soviets.

President Dwight Eisenhower

A 1957 Eisenhower administration coup attempt in Syria, in which
Jordan and Iraq were to invade the country after manufacturing a
pretext, went horribly wrong, provoking a crisis that spun out of
Washington’s control and brought the U.S. and Soviets to the brink of
war.
Turkey put 50,000 troops on the Syrian border, threatening to invade. Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev threatened
Turkey with an implied nuclear attack and the U.S. got Ankara to back
off. This sounds eerily familiar to what happened last month when Turkey
again threatened to
invade Syria and the U.S. put on the brakes. The main difference is
that Saudi Arabia in 1957 was opposed to the invasion of Syria, while it
was ready to join it last month. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Risking Nuclear War for Al Qaeda?“]
In the 1950s, the U.S. also began its association with Islamic
religious extremism to counter Soviet influence and contain secular Arab
nationalism. “We should do everything possible to stress the ‘holy war’
aspect,” President Eisenhower told his
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. After the Cold War, religious
extremists, some still tied to the West, became themselves the excuse
for U.S. intervention.
Despite U.S. regional ascendance in the 1950s, Britain and France
weren’t through. In 1953, an MI6-CIA coup in Iran replaced a democracy
with a restored monarchy when Mohammed Mossadegh, the elected prime
minister, was overthrown after seeking to nationalize British-controlled
Iranian oil. Britain had discovered oil in Iran in 1908, spurring
deeper interest in the region.
Three years later Britain and France combined with Israel to attack
Egypt in 1956 when President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who had taken over from
the ousted British-backed King Farouk, moved to nationalize the Suez
Canal. The U.S. stopped that operation, too, denying Britain emergency
oil supplies and access to the International Monetary Fund if the Brits
didn’t back down.
Suez represented the final shift in external power in the Middle East
from the U.K. to the U.S. But Washington couldn’t stop Britain from
trying and failing to assassinate Nasser, who had sparked the Arab nationalist movement.
In 1958, the U.S. landed 14,000 Marines in Lebanon to prop up
President Camille Chamoun after a civil conflict broke out against
Chamoun’s intention to change the constitution and run for reelection.
The rebellion was minimally supported by the United Arab Republic, the
1958-61 union between Egypt and Syria. It was the first U.S. invasion of
an Arab country, excluding the U.S.’s World War II intervention in
North Africa.1960 to 2003: Interventions Post Colonial
The 1954-1962 Algerian rebellion against French colonialism, which
Paris brutally tried to suppress, included Algerian acts of terrorism.
Exhibiting the same cluelessness displayed by State Department spokesman
Toner, the French attitude towards the uprising was expressed by an
exasperated French officer in film TheBattle of Algiers when he exclaimed, “What do you people want?”
From the 1960s to the 1980s, U.S. intervention in the region was
mostly restricted to military support for Israel in the 1967 and 1973
Arab-Israeli wars. From an Arab perspective that represented a major
U.S. commitment to protect Israeli colonialism.
The Soviet Union also intervened directly in the 1967-70 War of
Attrition between Egypt and Israel when Nasser went to Moscow to say
he’d resign and have a pro-Western leader take over if the Russians
didn’t come to his aid. In backing Nasser, the Soviets lost 58 men.
The Soviets were also involved in the region to varying degrees and
times throughout the Cold War, giving aid to Palestinians, Nasser’s
Egypt, Syria, Saddam’s Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya — all countries
and leaders charting an independent course from the West.
During the 1970 Black September conflict between Jordan and
Palestinian guerrillas, the U.S. had Marines poised to embark in Haifa
and ready to secure Amman airport when Jordan repelled a Syrian invasion
in support of the Palestinians.

President Ronald Reagan

In the 1980s the U.S. backed Saddam Hussein in his brutal, eight-year war with Iran, supplying him with arms, intelligence and chemical weapons, which he did not hesitate to use against Iranians and Kurds. President Ronald Reagan also bombed Libya in 1986 after accusing it without conclusive evidence of a Berlin bombing ten days earlier that killed a U.S. soldier.
The U.S. returned more directly to the region with a vengeance in the
1991 Gulf War, burying alive surrendering Iraqi troops with bulldozers;
shooting thousands
of soldiers in the back as they retreated on the Highway of Death, and
calling for uprisings in the Shia south and Kurdish north and then
leaving them to Saddam’s revenge.
Iraq never recovered fully from the devastation, being crushed for 12
years under U.N. and U.S. sanctions that then U.N. Ambassador Madeleine
Albright admitted contributed to the deaths of half a million Iraqi
children. But she said it was “worth it.”
Iraq’s sanctions only ended after the 2003 full-scale U.S. and
British invasion of the sovereign Arab nation, an assault justified by
bogus claims about Iraq hiding stockpiles of WMD that could be shared
with Al Qaeda. The invasion killed hundreds of thousands of people and
left Iraq devastated. The invasion also unleashed a civil war and gave
rise to the terrorist group, the Islamic State in Iraq, which later
merged with terrorists in Syria to become ISIS.
Throughout this century of intervention, Britain, France and the U.S.
managed the region through strong alliances with dictators or monarchs
who had no regard for democratic rights. But when those autocrats became
expendable, such as Saddam Hussein had, they are disposed of.The Biggest Invasion Yet
While most Americans may be unaware of this long history of
accumulated humiliation of Muslims, Christians and other religious
minorities in the region — and the resulting hatred of the West — they
can’t ignore the Iraq invasion, the largest by the West in the region,
excluding World War II. Nor is the public unaware of the 2011
intervention in Libya, and the chaos that has resulted. And yet no link
is made between these disasters and terror attacks on the West.
The secular strongmen of Iraq, Libya and Syria were targeted because
they dared to be independent of Western hegemony — not because of their
awful human rights records. The proof is that Saudi Arabia’s and
Israel’s human rights records also are appalling, but the U.S. still
staunchly stands by these “allies.”
During the so-called Arab Spring, when Bahrainis demanded democracy
in that island kingdom, the U.S. mostly looked the other way as they
were crushed by a combined force of the nation’s monarchy and Saudi
troops. Washington also clung to Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak until
the bitter end.
However, under the pretext of protecting the Libyan population, the
U.S. and NATO implemented a bloody “regime change” in Libya leading to
anarchy, another failed state and the creation of one more ISIS enclave.
For the past five years, the West and its Gulf allies have fueled the
civil war in Syria, contributing to another humanitarian disaster.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The West’s motive for all this meddling is often pinned on oil. But obedience is a strong factor. Hans Morgenthau wrote in Politics Among Nations (1968),
that the urge of empires to expand “will not be satisfied so long as
there remains anywhere a possible object of domination – a politically
organized group of men which by its very independence challenges the
conqueror’s lust for power.”
Tariq Ali, in his 2003 book Bush in Babylon, writes about
Gnaeus Julius Agricola, the Roman general responsible for much of the
conquest of Britain in the First Century: “On one of his visits to the
outer reaches of [Britain], Agricola looked in the direction of Ireland
and asked a colleague why it remained unoccupied. Because, came the
reply, it consisted of uncultivable bog lands and was inhabited by very
primitive tribes. What could it possibly have to offer the great Empire?
The unfortunate man was sternly admonished. Economic gain isn’t all.
Far more important is the example provided by an unoccupied country. It
may be backward, but it is still free.”Cloaking Motives
Little of this long history of Western manipulation, deceit and
brutality in the Middle East is known to Americans because U.S. media
almost never invokes it to explain Arab and Iranian attitudes towards
the West.
Muslims remember this history, however. I know Arabs who are still
infuriated by the Sykes-Picot backstabbing, let alone the most recent
depredations. Indeed fanatics like the Islamic State are still ticked
off about the Crusades, a much earlier round of Western intervention. In
some ways it’s surprising, and welcomed, that only the tiniest fraction
of Muslims has turned to terrorism.

Billionaire and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Nevertheless, Islamophobes like Donald Trump want to keep all Muslims
out of the U.S. until he figures out “what the hell is going on.” He
says Muslims have a “deep hatred” of Americans. But he won’t figure it
out because he’s ignoring the main cause of that hatred – the past
century of intervention, topped by the most recent Western atrocities in
Iraq and Libya.
Stripping out the political and historical motives renders terrorists
as nothing more than madmen fueled by irrational hate of a benevolent
West that says it only wants to help them. They hate us simply because
we are Western, according to people like Toner, and not because we’ve
done anything to them.
Israel and its Western enablers likewise bury the history of Israel’s
ethnic cleansing and piecemeal conquest of Palestine so they can
dismiss Palestinians who turn to terrorism as motivated only by hatred
of Jews for being Jews.
I’ve asked several Israelis why Palestinians tend to hate them. The
more educated the Israeli the more likely the answer was because of the
history of how Israel was established and how it continues to rule. The
less educated my respondent, the more likely I heard that they hate us
simply because we are Jews.
There’s no excuse for terrorism. But there is a practical way to curb
it: end the current interventions and occupations and plan no more.The Psychology of Terror
Of course, anger at the West’s history of exploiting Muslim lands
isn’t the only motivation for terrorism. There are emotional and group
pressures that push some over the line to strap on bombs and blow up
innocent people around them. Thankfully, it takes a very unusual type of
individual to react to this ugly history with ugly acts of terror.
Money also plays a part. We’ve seen waves of defections as ISIS has
recently cut fighters’ pay in half. Anger at Western-installed and
propped-up local rulers who oppress their people on behalf of the West
is another motive. Extremist preachers, especially Saudi Wahhabis, also
share the blame as they inspire terrorism, usually against Shia.

President Obama and King Salman Arabia stand
at attention during the U.S. national anthem as the First Lady stands in
the background with other officials on Jan. 27, 2015, at the start of
Obama’s State Visit to Saudi Arabia. (Official White House Photo by Pete
Souza). (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Wading into the psychology of why someone turns to terrorism is an
unenviable task. The official Western view is that Islamist extremists
merely hate modernity and secularism. That might be their motive in
wanting to backwardly transform their own societies by removing Western
influence. But it’s not what they say when they claim responsibility for
striking inside the West.
To ignore their words and dismiss their violent reaction to the long
and ongoing history of Western intervention may shield Americans and
Europeans from their partial responsibility for these atrocities. But it
also provides cover for the continuing interventions, which in turn
will surely produce more terrorism.
Rather than looking at the problem objectively – and self-critically –
the West ludicrously cloaks its own violence as an effort to spread
democracy (which never seems to materialize) or protect civilians (who
are endangered instead). To admit any connection between the sordid
historical record and anti-Western terrorism would be to admit
culpability and the price that the West is paying for its dominance.
Worse still, letting terrorists be perceived as simply madmen without
a cause allows the terrorist response to become justification for
further military action. This is precisely what the Bush administration
did after 9/11, falsely seeking to connect the attacks to the Iraqi
government.
By contrast, connecting terrorism to Western intervention could spark
a serious self-examination of the West’s behavior in the region leading
to a possible retreat and even an end of this external dominance. But
that is clearly something policymakers in Washington, London and Paris –
and their subservient media – aren’t prepared to do.Joe Lauria is a veteran foreign-affairs journalist based at
the U.N. since 1990. He has written for the Boston Globe, the London
Daily Telegraph, the Johannesburg Star, the Montreal Gazette, the Wall
Street Journal and other newspapers. He can be reached at joelauria@gmail.com and followed on Twitter at @unjoe.